Uh oh! My plane crashed! I was just taking off from Hawaii when my plane went down in the area of the East Pacific Rise. Fortunately everyone was ok on board. Once we were rescued from the water, we made it back to land I decided to do some research on where the plane had crashed. Turns out, the East Pacific Rise is a divergent plate boundary!
This boundary is located along the floor of the Pacific Ocean. It separates the Pacific Plate to the west from the North American Plate, and more. The ocean crust is moving away from the East Pacific Rise to either side at a rate of 70mm/year. On the eastern side of the rise, moving plates meet the westward moving South American Plate and the North American Plate and are subducted under them. The belt of volcanoes along the Andes and the arc of volcanoes through Central America and Mexico are the direct results of this collision.
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